As the number of women claiming they were groped by Arnold Schwarzenegger grew to 15 today, the actor headed for a campaign march in Sacramento, while Governor Gray Davis signed a law making California the largest state to require employer-paid health care.

A Knight Ridder poll released late yesterday found that support for recalling Democrat Davis might be slipping, although 54 per cent favoured removing him while 41 per cent were opposed. Republican Schwarzenegger continued to lead among potential replacements in Tuesday's election.

Davis, in Los Angeles today, signed a law that he predicted would provide health insurance to nearly 1.1 million working Californians who do not receive job-based coverage now. Though small businesses are exempted, the measure requires most employers to pay for their employees' health care.

"Today we take a bold step to reform health care," Davis said before signing the bill at a ceremony attended by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, actor Danny Glover and labor leaders.

Four more women surfaced today to accuse Schwarzenegger of groping, spanking or touching them inappropriately, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The latest group included an unidentified 51-year-old woman who said Schwarzenegger pinned her to him and spanked her repeatedly three years ago at a West Los Angeles post-production studio.

Three other women named by the Times said Schwarzenegger fondled them in separate incidents outside a Venice gym in the mid 1980s, at a bar in the late 1970s and on the set of the movie Predator in 1986.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Sean Walsh dismissed the accounts of three of the women as untrue. He said the actor had no recollection of the alleged gym incident.

The Times reported on Thursday that six women claimed he groped or sexually harassed them between 1975 and 2000. After the story was published, similar allegations surfaced from five other women, including two who said the actor harassed them on the set of the 1988 film Twins.

Speaking on morning television news shows today, Schwarzenegger repeated that the harassment allegations and reports that he praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as a young man were desperate last-minute politically motivated attacks.

"This is campaign trickery and it is dirty campaigning," he said in an interviewed aired today on ABC's This Week program. "Like, for instance, I despise anything and everything that Hitler stands for."

Schwarzenegger also denied the Times' Twins story as "absolutely not true": "It's just mean-spirited, and it's just trying to derail my campaign."

He stopped short of denying all the women's accounts, but said none of the women told him at the time: "You went over the line now."

Davis, in a statement, said, "The number of victims is mounting daily. These are very disturbing allegations and raise serious questions about whether he can govern California."

Schwarzenegger is responding with "evasive language and partial denials", Davis said, which he said should prompt voters to ask: "Are all these women and their families lying or is Mr Schwarzenegger not telling the truth?"

In a separate prerecorded interview aired on ABC's This Week, Davis said voters face a choice now between Schwarzenegger and voting against the recall.

"If people don't want him to be governor, then the alternative is to allow me to complete the term," Davis said.

Though the Knight Ridder poll, conducted Wednesday through Saturday, found a majority of voters support recalling Davis, the percentage of people saying they would definitely vote to oust Davis declined each day the poll was conducted, from 52 per cent on Wednesday to 44 per cent yesterday. Those saying they either were probably going to vote for the recall or were unsure how to vote increased from 10 per cent on Wednesday to 24 per cent yesterday.

If Davis is removed, the poll showed Schwarzenegger leading among potential replacements with 36 per cent support, to 29 per cent for Democratic Lieutenant-Governor Cruz Bustamante.

The poll of 1,000 registered voters, conducted by Elway/McGuire Research and posted on the San Jose Mercury News website, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Such polling results led to a new anti-recall ad in which US Senator Dianne Feinstein says: "This recall is turning around." The new ad from Californians Against the Costly Recall is set to begin airing in major markets tomorrow.

Though she names neither Davis nor Schwarzenegger, the senator cites the recent "serious allegations" against Schwarzenegger while asserting: "People are beginning to see how unfair it (the recall) is, and how harmful it is to California's economy and to our people."